Contents

English

Genesis

/tmp/lab started when several French people (Jeremie, Florian, Philippe, Benjamin, Xavier, Xeu, ...) met at Chaos Communication Camp 2007. Everyone agreed that Paris was really lacking a Hacker Space. We decided to create something when we got back to Paris, and we called it "lelab" hence "lelab.fr".

The idea was to rent something by sharing costs amongst all the Hacker Space Members.

Rent is hard in Paris, expensive. We got an offer 3 months later from an artist collective to have an artist space outside of Paris in the industrial suburb of Vitry Sur Seine. The building owner temporarily gave us the space for no rent. The temporary nature of this, plus the space's distance from the center of Paris discouraged some people from the original group. Therefore, we named the new space with a different name, /tmp/lab, so that when we'd find a correct spot in Paris, we'd be able to name it "Le Lab".

The little group composed of Xavier, Philippe, Sébastien, Rike, Florian and Nico took possession of the space, and after much cleaning up transformed an underground workshop into an industrial-style hacker space in November-December 2007.

Ideas

However important -even vital- to develop a civil space for technology creation and research, we didn't want the lab to become a new institution.
The name /tmp/lab was inspired by the idea of the permatemp, the temporary that stays in place -- but still is temporary and nomadic in its concept, as well as the Unix tradition of Open Systems.
The goal was to provide an infrastructure first, as the respected "Hackerspace Patterns" presentation details, and let one thousand beautiful projects blossom in this fertile environment: Open Source, hardware, cultural and artistic events, activism, etc.
We wanted everyone to see the /tmp/lab and say "Oh.. it's simple, lets build one with my friends in my town."

Development

Just one year after the opening of the /tmp/lab, many diverse projects are now involved with the space, with many new people joining the group month by month or just naturally connecting and cooperating. These projects are listed here in a semi-chronological order:

Boot party! :) and several other social events so far

Several presentations to various conferences, art students, biennial

OpenPattern - Modular FPGA-based project with many /tmp/lab members

OLPC France - One Laptop Per Child repair center

Experimental biodiesel

Dynamips-based SS7 experimentation lab with TSTF

Circuit bending workshops

OpenWRT routers tinkering and flashing, with two notable members of OpenWRT

Consumer B Gone - Cell phone that blocks shopping cart wheels

Hacker Space Fest - A conference+workshop+performance 6 day festival

Chip imaging

/tmp/usine - Reprap project

Freedom not Fear + Church of Security demonstration in Paris

Annale - "hacking+art" Contemporary Art Biennale with VSS

/tmp/van - for mobile operations

We were also really pleased to see two friends open Hacker Spaces in Brussels and in Montreal.

Future

We recently started to make more connections with local associations, NGOs and journalists who support the idea of getting their privacy back. We are also looking more actively for a new space in Paris where it will be possible to develop much more projects.